top of page

By:

Quaid Najmi

4 January 2025 at 3:26:24 pm

AI’s Maharaja smiles joyfully

All 30 grounded aircrafts now fly Mumbai : Air India’s Maharaja is all pleased as punch at 80. After years of huge costs and efforts, the last of the grounded 30 aircraft – inherited by the Tata Group during the privatization in Jan. 2022 – is now resurrected fully and took to the skies gracefully on Monday.   The aircraft is the gleaming VT-ALL, a Boeing 777-300ER, that was gathering grime since February 2020, and becomes the final among the two-and-half dozen aircraft that have been revved...

AI’s Maharaja smiles joyfully

All 30 grounded aircrafts now fly Mumbai : Air India’s Maharaja is all pleased as punch at 80. After years of huge costs and efforts, the last of the grounded 30 aircraft – inherited by the Tata Group during the privatization in Jan. 2022 – is now resurrected fully and took to the skies gracefully on Monday.   The aircraft is the gleaming VT-ALL, a Boeing 777-300ER, that was gathering grime since February 2020, and becomes the final among the two-and-half dozen aircraft that have been revved up and revived in the past few years, AI official sources said.   It marked a symbolic milestone for Air India itself - founded in 1932 by the legendary Bharat Ratna J. R. R. Tata - which once ruled the roost and was India’s pride in the global skies.   Once renowned for its royal service with the iconic Maharaja welcoming fliers on board, in 1953 it was taken over by the government of India. After years of piling losses, ageing aircraft, decline in operations and standards – almost like a Maharaja turning a pauper - it returned to the Tata Group four years ago.   This time it was not just the aircraft, the brand and the deflated Maharaja coming into the large-hearted Tata Group stables, but a formidable challenge to ensure that the airline could regain its old glory and glitter. Of the total around 190 aircraft in its fleet were 30 – or 15 pc – that had been grounded and neglected for years.   At that time, the late Ratan N. Tata had directed that all these valuable aircraft must be revived as far as possible and join the fleet. Accordingly, the VT-ALL, languishing at Nagpur for nearly five years, was ‘hospitalized’ at the Air India Engineering Service Ltd., its MRO facility in May 2025.   New Avatar Then started a thorough, painstaking nose-to-tail restoration of an unprecedented scale, in which over 3000 critical components were replaced, over 4,000 maintenance tasks executed, besides key structural upgrades like the longeron modification, engines, auxiliary power units, avionics, hydraulics, landing gears and almost every vital system was rebuilt or replaced.   After the repairs, the old aircraft was reborn, under the gaze of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation and technical assistance from Boeing, and the new ‘avatar’ jetliner emerged with the highest global safety standards.   The aircraft cleared all the rigorous checks, a successful test flight, earned the mandatory Airworthiness Review Certificate and then made its maiden commercial flight from Monday, March 16 – after a wait of six years.   Sturdy Fliers Created in 1946 to become an instant global icon, the Air India’s mascot Maharaja now sports a youthful and chic look, a welcome with folded hands, closed eyes, featuring a bejewelled turban, stylish jootis, and a textured kurta in Air India’s new colours. He is prominently visible at various touch-points in a flyer’s journey, such as First Class, exclusive lounges, and luxury products.   Today, he commands a mix fleet of around 190 narrow and wide-body Airbus and Boeing aircraft like : A319, A320, A320neo, A321, A321neo, A350-900 and B787-8, B787-9, B7770200LR, B-777-300ER. With the merger of Vistara and agreements signed for 10 A350 and 90 A320 aircraft, the Maharaja’s fleet is slated to soar to some 570 in the near future.

Masters of the Machine

In their brilliantly original 2023 book, Acemoglu and Johnson upend techno-optimism, revealing how choices we make about technology have repeatedly reshaped power and prosperity.

Technology, more specifically in the avatar of artificial intelligence today, has been extolled as being beneficial, uplifting and conducive to shared prosperity for humans. But is it really so? Or is it increasingly being manipulated and misused by a few powerful, economically well-placed elites in order to further their vested interests?


In ‘Power and Progress: Our 1000-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity,’ Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, both of whom received the Nobel prize in Economics last year, argue that today, as in certain periods in the past, technological progress is to a large extent being used for automation in order to eliminate worker employment, surveillance of workers in order to extract more out of them, and to eliminate organized trade unionism in order to reduce wages and cause the plummeting of bargaining powers of the workers. This results in the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few economically strong and influential cartels, while diminishing chances of shared prosperity among humankind.


Even in the past, this scenario has not always been so sinister and depressing. The Industrial Revolution unleashed a great wave of exploitation, but workers did rally themselves, present their views to their economic and political masters and succeeded in passing laws that vastly improved their working conditions, timings and increased their wages enabling them to live a decent and economically satisfying life.


In the United States, in the early twentieth century, laws against trusts, monopolies and the funding of federal politicians by companies were enacted. Prior to this, there were situations in which powerful corporations were giving money to Senators in order to have laws passed in their favour. Rockefeller even made a secret deal with the railways to charge his competitors more for transporting their consignments in order to eliminate competition. The Progressives, in the form of journalists, civil society activists and politicians (such as Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt) unraveled these dark secrets to the public, made them more aware of wrongdoings and were responsible for the passage of several remedial laws and acts. The New Deal launched by Franklin D. Roosevelt revolutionized the bargaining power of workers by enabling large-scale worker-employer contact.


Unfortunately, at least in the United States, trade unionism has been enfeebled, mainly because worker-employer discussions for shared productivity gains take place at the warehouse level. In Germany, for instance, workers have unions and work councils in many German companies and have been consulted in many organizational and technological decisions. They have also reversed several decisions which aimed at excessive automation. In the dual-track German system, works councils are engaged in communication and coordination in workplaces and can have a say in technology and training decisions, whereas industry unions are more focused on wage setting.


Taiwan is a shining example of how technology, in the form of digital tools, can be optimally used. Audrey Tang, today a minister in Taiwan for digital communication and transparency, previously a software entrepreneur and programmer, volunteered to help the Sunflower movement communicate its message to the broader public. After the Democratic Progressive Party came to power in the 2016 general election, Audrey has built a variety of digital tools for providing transparency in government decision making and for increasing deliberation and consultation with the public. This digital-democracy approach was used for a number of key decisions, including the regulation of the ride-sharing platform Uber and of liquor sales. Another platform, g0v, provides open data from several Taiwanese ministries, which civic hackers can use to develop alternative versions of bureaucratic services. These technologies helped Taiwan’s early and effective response to COVID-19, in which the private sector and civil society collaborated with the government to develop tools for testing and contact tracing.


New forums for virtual participation, however, can repeat the same mistakes that social media commits today, exacerbating echo chambers and extremism. Once such tools start being used extensively, some parties will come up with strategies to spread disinformation, whereas others might use such platforms for demagoguery.


The message is that technology should be used for shared prosperity, benefiting all, and not wielded as a powerful tool in the hands of a select and favoured few to dominate, spy upon, and artificially regulate the lives of the vast majority of citizens to suit their nefarious, selfish aims. Do echoes of Orwell’s ‘1984’ and Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ ring in the background? One shivers to conceptualize what the repercussions of misdirected technology would be if the latter were emphatically implemented.

(The writer is a Mumbai based educator. Views personal.)

Comments

bottom of page